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Virginia schools: ‘together and unequal’

August 28, 2012 by

“Together and unequal” is the new motto for Virginia schools, writes Andrew Rotherham, a former state school board member, in the Washington Post. With No Child Left Behind’s rewrite in limbo, Education Secretary Arne Duncan allowed states to set new performance targets. Virginia “took the stunning step of adopting dramatically different school performance targets based on race, ethnicity and income.”

President George W. Bush famously talked of “the soft bigotry of low expectations” in education, meaning the subtle ways educators and policymakers shortchange some students by expecting less of them.

Virginia’s new policy is anything but subtle. For example, under the new rules, schools are expected to have 78 percent of white students and 89 percent of Asian students passing Virginia’s Standards of Learning math tests but just 57 percent of black students, 65 percent of Hispanic students and 59 percent of low-income students. The goals for special-education students are even lower, at 49 percent. Worse, those targets are for 2017. The intermediate targets are even less ambitious — 36 percent for special-education students this year, for instance. Goals for reading will be set later.

Instead of setting lower targets for minority and poor students, Virginia could “provide substantially more support to these students and their schools,” writes Rotherham, a partner at the nonprofit Bellwether Education and an education columnist for Time.

The expectations aren’t high for any students (except maybe Asians), Rotherham adds on Eduwonk.

Virginia doesn’t give parents much choice if they’re not satisfied with the neighborhood school, he notes.

There are fewer than a handful of charter schools in the Commonwealth and Virgina’s charter school law consistently is ranked among the nation’s worst by policy organizations, public school choice is vociferously resisted, and county borders are treated like international lines when it comes to almost any hint of letting students cross them for better schooling options. I’m not a big supporter of private school choice but if the best Virginia can do is say to citizens and parents that its public schools will have 59 percent of poor students and 57 percent of black students passing state tests five years from now then what exactly is the argument for not allowing their parents to seek out better options?

The Obama administration signed off on Virginia NCLB waiver, Rotherham writes. Are they OK with this?

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Instead of rules, set procedures

August 26, 2012 by

Don’t spend time and energy establishing and enforcing classroom rules, writes Coach G. Provide  ”clear procedures” that give kids structure. “You can’t do your best at anything if you don’t know what you’re supposed to do.”

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Barbie was right: Math is hard

August 21, 2012 by

The Is algebra necessary? debate is “insanely pointless,” writes Education Realist.

Elementary students do quite well in math, but stumble in higher grades when the math gets harder — even though their teachers know much more math, ER writes. “We have all forgotten the Great Wisdom of Barbie.” Math is hard.

In California, at least, tens of thousands of high school kids are sitting in math classes that they don’t understand, feeling useless, understanding deep in their bones that education has nothing to offer them. Meanwhile, well-meaning people who have never spent an hour of their lives trying to explain advanced math concepts to the lower to middle section of the cognitive scale pontificate about teacher ability, statistics vs. algebra, college for everyone, and other useless fantasies that they are allowed to engage in because until our low performers represent the wide diversity of our country to perfection, no one’s going to ruin a career by pointing out that this a pipe dream. And of course, while they’re engaging in these fantasies, they’ll blame teachers, or poverty, or curriculum, or parents, or the kids, for the fact that their dreams aren’t reality.

“Kids stuck in the hell of unfair expectations will go nowhere,” ER concludes.

 

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Gray expectations

August 16, 2012 by

College success requires academic preparation — and understanding academic expectations.

In Teaching across the cultural divide, a foreign-born student with poor writing skills threatens to give the adjunct a bad online rating unless she gets an A.

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Students: School is too easy

July 11, 2012 by

School is “too easy,” according to many students concludes a Center for American Progress analysis. Many students aren’t challenged in school and aren’t working very hard, conclude Ulrich Boser and Lindsay Rosenthal, who analyzed federal education surveys.

Some 37 percent of fourth-graders, nearly one-third of eighth-graders and 21 percent of 12th-graders say their math work is often or always too easy. Just under half of 12-grade students say they are always or almost always learning in math class.

Civics and history work is easier: More than half of eighth-grade and high school students say their civics and history work is often or always too easy.

For most students, school is not a “pressure cooker,” Boser, a senior fellow at the center, told USA Today.

Only one in five eighth-graders read more than 20 pages a day, either in school or for homework. Most report that they read far less.

“It’s fairly safe to say that potentially high-achieving kids are probably not as challenged as they could be or ought to be,” Boser said.

Almost a third of eighth-grade students report reading less than five pages a day.

The report recommends raising expectations and standards.

Here’s an interactive map of the states.

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Schleicher: China’s students are ‘remarkable’

May 11, 2012 by

China: The world’s cleverest country? asks the BBC. Shanghai students ace PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment). Now Andreas Schleicher, who runs PISA for the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) says Chinese students all over the country excel in reading, math and science.

“Even in rural areas and in disadvantaged environments, you see a remarkable performance.”

In particular, he said the test results showed the “resilience” of pupils to succeed despite tough backgrounds – and the “high levels of equity” between rich and poor pupils.

. . . “In China, the idea is so deeply rooted that education is the key to mobility and success.”

The results for disadvantaged pupils would be the envy of any Western country, he says.

Asian culture encourages students to work hard, Schleicher tells the BBC.

“North Americans tell you typically it’s all luck. ‘I’m born talented in mathematics, or I’m born less talented so I’ll study something else.’

“In Europe, it’s all about social heritage: ‘My father was a plumber so I’m going to be a plumber’.

“In China, more than nine out of 10 children tell you: ‘It depends on the effort I invest and I can succeed if I study hard.’

“They take on responsibility. They can overcome obstacles and say ‘I’m the owner of my own success’, rather than blaming it on the system.”

The high-scoring Asian countries expect all students to succeed, Schleicher believes. School is not a “sorting mechanism” to find the brightest students.

I’m surprised to hear China described as an egalitarian education system. China’s best (and most politically connected) students attend well-funded  ”key” or “super” schools, which lead to top universities, complains this China.org story. Rural students are disadvantaged.

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Study: Teachers go soft on minority students’ work

May 8, 2012 by

After reading a poorly written essay, teachers offered comments and advice. Those who thought the writer was black or Latino provided more praise and less criticism, according to a Rutgers study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology (JEP), reports Science Daily.

(The study) involved 113 white middle school and high school teachers in two public school districts located in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut tri-state area, one middle class and white, and the other more working class and racially mixed.

“Many minority students might not be getting input from instructors that stimulates intellectual growth and fosters achievement,” said Kent Harber, Rutgers-Newark psychology professor.

George W. Bush called it “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

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Learning from high-performing charters

March 23, 2012 by

High expectations for student behavior and intensive teacher coaching are the keys to success for high-performing charter networks, concludes a new report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education and Mathematica.

Inner City Education Foundation, KIPP DC, Uncommon Schools, and YES Prep  use “positive reinforcements and clear consequences, zero tolerance policies for potentially dangerous behaviors, and consistent schoolwide enforcement of the student behavior systems.”

  By conveying consistent and clear expectations to students, these CMOs try to create a safe, focused environment where effective learning can take place.

At high-performing CMOs, administrators and master teachers observe and coach teachers. “Teachers receive intensive preparation on classroom management.”

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Why some black men succeed in college

February 11, 2012 by

Black males who do well in college have parents — and at least one K-12 teacher — with high expectations, concludes the National Black Male College Achievement Study.

Black male achievers typically come from working-class families, concludes Shaun Harper, an associate professor higher education at Penn who founded the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education. Nearly half have parents with no college degree. “As a group they shun the idea that they are cognitively smarter than their less-successful friends or cousins or other peers (and their high-school academic records largely back that up),” notes Inside Higher Ed.

In addition to parents who considered college a “non-negotiable” goal, and a teacher who took a special interest, achievers had adequate financial support to pay for college and support from black juniors and seniors when they started college.

Sixty percent grew up in homes with two parents. “Census data show that 35 percent of black children grow up in two-parent homes,” reports Inside Higher Ed.

Harper asked each of the 219 black men to talk not only about themselves but about the experiences of their three best black male childhood friends — and these differences virtually jump off the report’s pages.

“When asked what differentiated their own paths from those of their peers who were not enrolled in college, the participants almost unanimously cited parenting practices,” the study states. “Their friends’ parents, the achievers believed, did not consistently maintain high expectations and were not as involved in their sons’ schooling. By contrast, most of the achievers’ parents and family members more aggressively sought out educational resources to ensure their success — tutoring and academic support programs, college preparatory initiatives, and summer academies and camps, to name a few.”

Like the well-to-do parents in the preceding story, the black male achievers’ parents invested in their children’s success.

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Tuning up higher ed

February 10, 2012 by

What does a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering mean? What about an associate degree in nursing? Colleges and universities in seven states are “tuning” courses and degree programs, setting clear standards for what graduates in a specific discipline should know and be able to do.

E-textbooks aren’t much cheaper than traditional books. Apple’s iBook app will require students to use an iPad. To really slash rising textbook costs, college students need access to o-books — free or very cheap open-source learning materials — advocates argue.

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